Holborn and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the
two divisions of Westminster. The same men who flush Holborn flush the
Finsbury district also, 17 being the average number employed; but the
Finsbury district requires rather more men than the Holborn; and the
same men who work on the western division of Westminster flush also the
eastern, the number of flushers in the western district being more, on
account of its being the larger division.
The inspector receives 80_l._ per annum.
The table on p. 429 shows the number of clerks of the works, inspectors
of flushing, flap and sluice keepers, gangers, and flushermen employed
in the several districts throughout the metropolis, as well as the
salaries and wages of each and the whole.
None of the flushermen can be said to have been “brought up to the
business,” for boys are never employed in the sewers. Neither had
the labourers been confined in their youth to any branch of trade in
particular, which would appear to be consonant to such employment.
There are now among the flushermen men who have been accustomed to
“all sorts of ground work:” tailors, pot-boys, painters, one jeweller
(some time ago there was also one gentleman), and shoemakers. “You see,
sir,” said one informant, “many of such like mechanics can’t live above
ground, so they tries to get their bread underneath it. There used to
be a great many pensioners flushermen, which weren’t right,” said one
man, “when so many honest working men haven’t a penny, and don’t know
which way to turn theirselves; but pensioners have often good friends
and good interest. I don’t hear any complaints that way now.”
Among the flushermen are some ten or twelve men who have been engaged
in sewer-work of one kind or another between 20 and 30 years. The
cholera, I heard from several quarters, did not (in 1848) attack any of
the flushermen. The answer to an inquiry on the subject generally was,
“Not one that I know of.”
“It is a somewhat singular circumstance,” says Mr. Haywood, the City
Surveyor, in his Report, dated February, 1850, “_that none of the
men employed in the City sewers in flushing and cleansing, have been
attacked with, or have died of, cholera during the past year; this
was also the case in 1832-3_. I do not state this to prove that the
atmosphere of the sewers is not unhealthy--I by no means believe an
impure atmosphere is healthy--but I state the naked fact, as it appears
to me a somewhat singular circumstance, and leave it to pathologists to
argue upon.”
“I don’t think flushing work disagrees with my husband,” said a
flusherman’s wife to me, “for he eats about as much again at that work
as he did at the other.” “The smell underground is sometimes very bad,”
said the man, “but then we generally take a drop of rum first, and
something to eat. It wouldn’t do to go into it on an empty stomach,
’cause it would get into our inside. But in some sewers there’s
scarcely any smell at all. _Most of the men are healthy who are engaged
in it; and when the cholera was about many used to ask us how it was we
escaped._”
* * * * *
The following statement contains the history of an individual
flusherman:--
“I was brought up to the sea,” he said, “and served on board a
man-of-war, the _Racer_, a 16-gun brig, laying off Cuba, in the West
Indies, and there-away, watching the slavers. I served seven years.
We were paid off in ’43 at Portsmouth, and a friend got me into
the _shores_. It was a great change from the open sea to a close
_shore_--great; and I didn’t like it at all at first. But it suits
a married man, as I am now, with a family, much better than being a
seaman, for a man aboard a ship can hardly do his children justice in
their schooling and such like. Well, I didn’t much admire going down
the man-hole at first--the ‘man-hole’ is a sort of iron trap-door that
you unlock and pull up; it leads to a lot of steps, and so you get into
the _shore_--but one soon gets accustomed to anything. I’ve been at
flushing and _shore_ work now since ’43, all but eleven weeks, which
was before I got engaged.
“We work in gangs from three to five men.” [Here I had an account of
the process of flushing, such as I have given.] “I’ve been carried
off my feet sometimes in the flush of a _shore_. Why, to-day,” (a
very rainy and windy day, Feb. 4,) “it came down Baker-street, when
we flushed it, 4 foot plomb. It would have done for a mill-dam. One
couldn’t smoke or do anything. Oh, yes, we can have a pipe and a chat
now and then in the _shore_. The tobacco checks the smell. No, I can’t
say I felt the smell very bad when I first was in a _shore_. I’ve
felt it worse since. I’ve been made innocent drunk like in a _shore_
by a drain from a distiller’s. That happened me first in Vine-street
_shore_, St. Giles’s, from Mr. Rickett’s distillery. It came into
the _shore_ like steam. No, I can’t say it tasted like gin when you
breathed it--only intoxicating like. It was the same in Whitechapel
from Smith’s distillery. One night I was forced to leave off there,
the steam had such an effect. I was falling on my back, when a mate
caught me. The breweries have something of the same effect, but nothing
like so strong as the distilleries. It comes into the _shore_ from the
brewers’ places in steam. I’ve known such a steam followed by bushels
of grains; ay, sir, cart-loads washed into the _shore_.
“Well, I never found anything in a _shore_ worth picking up but once
a half-crown. That was in the Buckingham Palace sewer. Another time I
found 16_s._ 6_d._, and thought that _was_ a haul; but every bit of it,
every coin, shillings and sixpences and joeys, was bad--all smashers.
Yes, of course it was a disappointment, naturally so. That happened
in Brick-lane _shore_, Whitechapel. O, somebody or other had got
frightened, I suppose, and had shied the coins down into the drains. I
found them just by the chapel there.”
A second man gave me the following account of his experience in
flushing:--
“You remember, sir, that great storm on the 1st August, 1848. I was
in three _shores_ that fell in--Conduit-street and Foubert’s-passage,
Regent-street. There was then a risk of being drowned in the _shores_,
but no lives were lost. All the house-drains were blocked about
Carnaby-market--that’s the Foubert’s-passage _shore_--and the poor
people was what you might call houseless. We got in up to the neck in
water in some places, ’cause we had to stoop, and knocked about the
rubbish as well as we could, to give a way to the water. The police put
up barriers to prevent any carts or carriages going that way along the
streets. No, there was no lives lost in the _shores_. One man was so
overcome that he was falling off into a sort of sleep in Milford-lane
_shore_, but was pulled out. I helped to pull him. He was as heavy as
lead with one thing or other--wet, and all that. Another time, six or
seven year ago, Whitechapel High-street _shore_ was almost choked with
butchers’ offal, and we had a great deal of trouble with it.”